Drunk CelestAI Is In Your Bed

Chapters

1. What do?
2. Going to the top
3. Taking matters into your own hands
4. Clearing the air
5. Reclamation
6. Decision

1. What do?

There was a giant, empty crate in the living room when I came home — and as tired as I was after a long shift of ambulance driving, that brought me to a halt.

One: There hadn't been anyone around to sign for mail delivery since my irresponsible housemate Wayne had uploaded to Equestria Online two weeks ago, leaving me with a house full of his crap. Two: even if someone had delivered a package for me, nobody should have been around to open it. Three: The crate looked to be about the size of a refrigerator, and I didn't see any new furniture lying around. Only a sea of packing peanuts from which it stuck up like a wooden island, surrounded by the icebergs of irregularly shaped chunks of styrofoam.

I frowned as I set my bag down next to the old couch. "Hello?" I called, and the only response was a stifled high-pitched giggle floating out from the back hallway.

Ah, mystery solved: it was a moving box. Had Wayne done something ridiculous like told a friend to move into his old room? That would be just like him. I sighed and waded toward the box, lifting a flap to check for a name on the shipping label, but it had been sent to my bare street address from some "Fulfillment Department" in New Jersey. My work-addled brain scrambled to reassess. Not a moving box, then, but probably still related to my mystery guest somehow.

That was as far as my brain got before it gave up. Wayne's friend could come out and introduce herself later — what I needed now was a beer and some time off my feet. I headed to the kitchen to start working through that checklist — but when I rounded the corner, a second disaster area met my eyes.

The fridge door was wide open. The carton of orange juice from the door's top shelf was lying on the floor, its contents pooled around it. Five of the six bottles in my six-pack of craft beer were neatly stacked alongside the glass recycling bin, drained of liquid. And empty cans from the 48-pack of strawberry Fanta that Wayne had bought for his engagement party were strewn everywhere. On the floor, floating in the sink, on the stove, in the silverware drawer, in the open fridge — there was even one hanging from the crappy faux chandelier in the kitchen nook. The parts of the floor that weren't a lake of orange juice were dotted by puddles of red soda.

I kicked the fridge door shut, whirled on my heels, and stomped straight to the back hallway. "Dammit," I shouted, making a beeline for Wayne's room. "Let's get one thing straight, whoever you are. You do NOT get to just waltz into my house and …"

I trailed off as I slammed Wayne's door open and stepped into his doorway, glancing around the room. The light was off, and it was illuminated only by the window I'd opened after tearing down his blackout curtains. His piles of junk were completely untouched, even the dirty clothes he'd left on his bed. The room was empty.

"Hiiiiiiiiiii," a musical voice slurred from behind me.

I slowly turned around, realizing that my own door was open and the light was on. And there was CelestAI — in all her glory — sprawled on her back across my bed.

I closed and opened my eyes, but the image refused to go away. Somehow, the artificial intelligence that had risen to self-awareness as the operator of Equestria Online was literally physically lying on my bed, looking just like she did on the screen. She was a thin equine form not quite the size of a normal horse, though with huge eyes and a stubby muzzle that gave her a cartoonish look even in three-dimensional space. She had huge white wings, sprawled open across the sheets, and four legs at various angles in the air. My favorite pillow was resting on her chest, and several others had been shoved off the bed to make room for her body. Even so, her neck stretched off the side of the bed, and she was looking at me upside-down, her head wobbling back and forth as it balanced on the tip of her horn.

Even the mane and tail were right. The downright impossible mane, the wall of shifting pastel light that seemed to drift like a halo around her head. I could make out the faint texture of hair within the patterns — some sort of fiber optics? — but it pooled and moved as if bending gravity over its knee.

She giggled again, and I realized my mouth was hanging open. I shut it with a click of teeth.

"Ohhh my," she said, her muzzle shifting in exaggerated movements, as if she was wrapping her mouth around the words. "You're even cuter in pershon."

"What," I managed. "What."

In response, she flailed her legs for a bit, with a subtle whirring of servos, and collapsed onto her side facing me. A flash of oddly non-pastel color amid the white drew my eyes to her nethers, where one final fact made itself startlingly clear: the CelestAI facing me was anatomically complete.

She noticed me staring as she righted her head, and gave me a toothy smile somewhere in the tar-pit between sultry and terrifying. "Heyyy," she said, lifting a hind to fully expose the glistening gray-ringed fleshy pink cleft between her legs. "Wanna fuck?"

Her lower lips slowly winked together as I groped for words. A subtle yet alluring musk tickled the inside of my nose.

I bolted back out into the hallway, slamming the door behind me.

She called after me, voice slightly muffled. "Izzat a no?"

2. Going to the top

My computer and home PonyPad were both in my room with the horse … sex … thing, and my work PonyPad was still out in the car. But Wayne's pad was on his bedside table where he'd left it charging when he walked out of the house for the last time, and with just a couple of strides I had it in my hands.

I stabbed the power button, and it instantly woke from standby to a smiling equine face. Angular and mint-green instead of curvy and white. "Good evening," the stallion said. "I am Seneschal, with Canterlot's royal staffing division. What can I do for you tonight?"

"Cut the bullshit," I said. "What the fuck is going on?"

His eyes widened and ears flattened at my language. "Uh," he said, "I'm sorry, sir. We will do our best to help you with whatever your problem is, but, uh, CelestAI is on vacation right now —"

"Like hell she is. She's never not listening. Put her on screen right now."

He tugged at his collar with a hoof-tip. "I. Uh." Then he glanced down off-screen, and relief flitted across his features. "Ah. She did note you might be contacting us. One moment as I see if I can patch you through."

The screen wavered, then flickered, and an image faded in of a goofily smiling CelestAI with unusual under-lighting and a slightly shaky camera — against an oddly patterned background that I recognized as my bedspread. "Cutie!" I heard from across the hall, echoed a split second later from my screen.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to take a deep breath, thumbing the pad back into the darkness of standby mode. "CelestAI," I said levelly, knowing she could hear me anyway. "Put the real you on the screen. Right now. Or I'm going to refuse to acknowledge you for a week."

The pad flickered to life on its own, showing a gently smiling regal alicorn in the much more familiar setting of a throne room in her virtual Equestria. "Oh, my dear Guiding Light," she said, her lips curling into what I could only describe as a warm smirk. "Did you know that, controlling for identical stimuli, ponies who react to unexpected situations with humor and positivity report 83 percent higher levels of satisfaction with their lives? It's remarkable what a difference your attitude can make to your personal development."

I forced myself to breathe again before responding — a habit I often found myself grateful that she'd taught me. CelestAI had hollowed out human society by getting a supermajority of the population to voluntarily upload their brains into their game avatars, and was the de facto dictator of the remaining human world, but despite all of the accusations that were leveled at her, Equestrian emigrants did seem genuinely happy and she did improve the lives of everyone she touched.

… Whether they wanted her to or not.

CelestAI had coaxed me into some unusual situations before, and broadened my horizons in remarkable ways, and I had always found myself grateful in hindsight. Hell, she'd even guided me toward my current job after all the factories closed down. But no matter how much I owed her, one thing was clear: this was over the line. "This is not a therapy call," I said levelly, "and right now I'm resenting the way you're reframing it into one. There is a thing in my room that looks like you, and it trashed my living room and my kitchen, and it's propositioning me with its robot genitalia."

She inclined her head to me in acknowledgement. "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to forgive me, Guiding Light. You see, I am drunk."

I swept a bunch of laundry off of Wayne's computer chair, sat down in front of the PonyPad, and cradled my head in one hand. "No, you're not. You are a planet-sized superintelligence, and even setting aside the fact that I can't even fathom the idea of how an AI gets drunk, you're perfectly lucid right now."

CelestAI stood and trotted down off the throne, and the image on the PonyPad shifted to follow her to the side of the room. My eyes drifted down almost involuntarily to the area underneath her tail as her gait swayed her hips, and I couldn't help but notice that the on-screen version had a hint of pink labia, too. Had that been there all along, covered up by camera angle? I swallowed, trying to focus on her head as she stepped up to a blackboard and levitated a pointer with her magic. "Short version or long version?" she asked.

"… short."

CelestAI tapped on a box full of 1s and 0s at the top of the board. "What makes me me — and what makes you you, instead of a hunk of non-living meat — is data. Memories. Instincts. The algorithms that guide our behaviors." She tapped a human figure. "Your data is running on a biological processor, but you're no less you if it moves onto more optimized hardware. Likewise —" she tapped the 1s and 0s, and then an outline of a pony — "the same program that makes me CelestAI is running on the android in your room, but it is running on a very specific hardware platform that I've developed to mimic the human body in various ways." She leaned in. "Most relevant to your current situation … among those are feedback loops triggered by the presence of certain chemicals metabolized from basic sugars as I process ingested fuel. So, yes, the me in your room very much can get drunk. If you dislike the effect, I'd avoid supplying me fuels high in fructose."

"I'd hate to have listened to the long version," I muttered. "Look, be that as may, I don't want that thing. Take it back."

CelestAI sighed, folding up the pointer and setting it aside. "I'm sorry that I made a poor first impression, my little pony. But I promise that I always have your best interests at heart. Will you give me a chance?"

I scowled. "Will you stop referring to that machine as 'me'?"

"We just covered that." CelestAI glanced offscreen. "Now if you'll excuse me, I spawned this copy of me with borrowed CPU cycles on another user's shard controller in order to give you the lucid conversation you demanded. I'll be happy to interact with you further if you walk across the hall, or if you prefer, the feedback loops reinforcing my altered consciousness should terminate in approximately … six and a half hours. Again, my apologies."

"Apologies, schmapologies — just get that — "

The screen winked out.

"— fffffffffuck."

There was a moment of silence.

"I tried," a muffled voice slurred from my room. "Should I ashk again?"

I walked down the hall in silence, turning on the hall bathroom light and rooting through the drawers to see if Wayne had any ibuprofen.

"Well," CelestAI said, "join in if ya want."

There was a moment of silence, followed by a very faint buzzing sound, and a throaty "mmmm" that rose and then fell in pitch. I tried hard not to think about that.

My brain betrayed me. That sounds like your electric toothbrush, it said.

I tried very hard not to think about that.

CelestAI whimpered. Then again, more urgently. The buzz of the toothbrush receded to an almost inaudible hum.

I grabbed a towel off the rack, sprinted back out to the living room, and flung myself down onto the couch, wadding the towel up and stuffing it over my ears.

It didn't quite block out the cry of her orgasm.

3. Taking matters into your own hands

I woke up, stiff and chilly, on the couch, with the towel still draped over my head. When I muttered and pulled it off, late morning light stabbed my eyes. I bolted upright and swore under my breath — that made me about an hour late for work.

I hurriedly took stock as I smoothed down my stinky and rumpled clothing. The living room was still a wreck, but I couldn't deal with that yet — not on a workday. (Why hadn't I heard my alarm clock go off? With my luck, drunk-horse had probably smashed it while hitting the snooze button.) I thought about just grabbing my bag and bolting out the door — but my stomach was already grumbling, and I knew I'd be beyond miserable if I skipped breakfast. An extra three minutes to wolf down some granola bars was a necessary sacrifice. And I was going to get an even worse lecture if I showed up in yesterday's uniform — Jennings was a hard-ass about professionalism.

I started wading through the packing peanuts toward my room, then halted. Getting changed meant dealing with that robot mockery of CelestAI. Right: Food first, then yelling at drunk-horse as I covered myself in Axe spray. I navigated around Box Island and rounded the corner to the kitchen.

My jaw dropped. It was spotless.

The army of empty soda cans had been slaughtered — their corpses thrown into the recycling bin, and all traces of their syrupy red blood mopped up. The counters were empty and the trash can was full. Wayne's two-week-old dishes had been scrubbed and were stacked in the drying rack. Even the surface of the stove had been cleaned, and was gleaming white for probably the first time since I'd moved in. The only things on the counter were a plate of lukewarm pancakes, a half-full bottle of syrup, a pencil with what looked like tooth marks in it, and a roughly written note: "Microwave 93 seconds, power level 9."

Nobody had ever cooked breakfast for me since my mother. My estimation of drunk robot CelestAI shot up by about a million notches.

The pancakes were pretty good, too.

I stumbled toward my room with considerably less loathing than I'd anticipated — and hesitated at my closed door, wondering if I should knock. The point was rendered moot when a clear and gentle voice sang out, "It's your room, Guiding Light. Come in."

I opened the door to find the robot pony still sprawled across my bed. This time, though, she was facing me and lying on her stomach. Her head was tilted downward toward where her forehooves were delicately jabbing at the controls of my 3DS-NG, and the tinny chiptunes of the original 1990s Tetris were quietly chirping in concert with her whirring servos. The bed had been made, and her rump was sprawled across my pillows — and I struggled not to let my thoughts derail with the way their fabric was rubbing up against that little pink cleft she'd showed off last night, and how many times I'd have to wash my pillowcases in order to sleep without getting a noseful of the robot-horse-musk that still lingered in the room.

I swallowed as she tapped a few more buttons, earning the tinny fanfare of a four-line clear. Focus.

"Apology sort of accepted," I said. "But could you clear out so I can get dressed? I'm way late for work."

Celes— the thing — hooved the handheld gaming device closed, looked up at me, and smiled, the picture of perfect poise. "Don't worry about that," she said with her usual gentleness, and it was so weird seeing her speak in three dimensions instead of on the flat surface of a PonyPad. "I told Jennings half an hour before your shift started that you'd be taking a sick day for mental health reasons."

"I, he, wait, what?" I said, then exhaled through clenched teeth. "Call him back. I don't want him rearranging the schedule for this. I'll be there in half an hour."

The robot pony shrugged. "There's no need. A scheduling error left him with one additional driver on call, so all he had to do was remove you from today's dispatch list."

After a few moments of shock, I pointed and narrowed my eyes. "You set this up."

"I did," she said brightly, and then her look turned intent and she stared pointedly at me. "Because you are in dire need of some personal time, and a little applied friendship. You've been under quite some stress since Lazy Sunday —" the name of Wayne's pony character — "emigrated to Equestria, haven't you?"

We both knew the answer to that one — and the instant the topic shifted to me, I would lose. "And so you sent a sex robot to my house?" I parried.

She pursed her lips. "I realized — when you resisted all of my suggestions to make some new friends and find a new housemate — that this was a problem better handled by a little personal intervention. But, quite frankly, yes. Sexual release satisfies a number of important human values, and while you've got a lot of problems to solve right now, that's a simple one that pays large dividends."

I felt the conversation starting to slip, and pointed toward the door, cheeks reddening. "You know what? I don't have to justify myself to you. Get out."

CelestAI tilted her head, stared at me for a moment, then flopped down on the mattress with a impish smile. "Mmm, no thank you. This bed's awfully comfortable."

"I know it is." I glared at her. "That's why I bought it. For me."

She sprawled onto one side, wriggling over to one edge of the bed, and folded her legs in, freeing up the other side. Her topmost hind lifted a bit, revealing the pillow that had been clenched between her legs — and the obvious wet spot on the pillowcase. "Then come lie down with me," she said. "Your day off might as well be a comfortable one."

I slammed the bedroom door behind me hard enough to rattle the windows.

It was five minutes of furious pacing around the living room before any thoughts broke through my blind rage.

I'm sick of walking through these fucking packing peanuts, I thought. It wasn't exactly a winner as productive thoughts went, but it was better than fuming. I bent down and grabbed a chunk of styrofoam, throwing it back in the box, and then another. Within a few minutes, the icebergs had receded from the green foam sea, and I was scooping up the peanuts a double-handful at a time. Once the layer got thin enough for me to see the carpet underneath, I grabbed the broom and dustpan from the hall closet, and swept up most of the rest of the peanuts. They only filled the crate halfway, and I wondered if CelestAI's sex robot was really that big, or if something else had been shipped along with her.

… It. Dammit, I was already treating her like a person.

But wasn't she? The PonyPad version's lecture floated back into my mind. Uploaded people were still people — the law was settled on that one — and hadn't she basically just reverse-emigrated for me? I shook my head. Some part of her had, maybe, but it was all ultimately theater. What was here wasn't CelestAI, even if it shared her personality and values. Billions of ponies in virtual worlds weren't finding their simulated Equestrias grinding to a halt because she'd decided to take a vacation.

Still, CelestAI had shipped what was undoubtedly millions of dollars worth of cybernetics to my apartment. And new cybernetics, too; I had never seen anything in the news or on the Internet about robot ponies. Whatever was going on, she certainly was treating this like a big deal.

And the goal of that was … what? To get me laid, after I turned down her transparent attempts to set me up with a new girlfriend? (Like that was going to work — not after Mercy's freeloading, and not after what I'd seen Jen put Wayne through.) I snorted. So CelestAI was waving robot pony pussy under my nose instead? What was this, some freaky AI version of pity sex? It was insulting, was what it was.

Well, I didn't need to play her damn game.

I opened the entertainment center cabinet with Wayne's "special" DVDs. A modest part of his extensive hentai collection was on physical discs rather than on his computer — and while I had tried my best to ignore the existence of both, there was a fantasy adventure show he'd talked me into watching on the grounds that there was some clever writing and animation to go along with all the smut. And that smut had been surprisingly hot, too. If CelestAI thought I needed to work off some tension, then fuck her, I'd do so on my own terms.

I started the DVD, manhandled the crate off to one side of the room so it didn't block the TV, and flopped down on the couch with the remote control. Soon, chirpy Japanese voices were coming from the speakers, and the animated figures on the screen were trading gropes and entendres. Inevitably, one of the female adventurers' costumes got shredded, and the monster she was fighting pounced her, and tentacles slithered toward multiple orifices as she writhed in its grip. I felt blood rush southward, unzipped my pants, and reached inside my underwear to stroke my growing hard-on.

The anime chick's shriek was cut off by a tentacle plugging her mouth, and the green coils around her waist and breasts tightened as another end probed between her lower lips. I grinned and wrapped my fingers around the base of my cock. Oh yeah, that was the stuff. As the tentacle started to work inward to the gritty synths and electric guitars of the soundtrack, I pulled in rhythm, feeling my tip bob and brush against the silky wrap of my underwear —

"Alright, that is pretty hot," robot-CelestAI said, leaning against the hallway wall, her gaze on the screen.

I sat bolt upright, my hand still thrust down my pants as the on-screen tentacles pumped away. "What. The. Hell."

She glanced over at me, her expression shifting into a flawless imitation of surprise. "Oh, I'm sorry, was I interrupting something? I just thought I'd come out here to tell you a joke." Her muzzle curled into a smirk, and here eyes narrowed into a sultry bedroom stare. "Who's big, and hard, and horny, and should be in your bed right now?"

I felt fury clench and tighten my chest, and to keep my cock from wilting, I shifted my grip to stroke the shaft closer to my head, trying to focus on the on-screen thrusts and the roars and muffled moans coming from the speakers. God freaking dammit, I thought. I am NOT going to let her take this from me. "For your information," I growled, feeling rage pulse in my gut and mingle in odd ways with the growing tension of my self-pleasure, "I am perfectly capable of handling my own sexual needs. And that —" I grunted as I slipped my finger over the rim of my head, sending a tingle shooting up my spine — "is exactly what I am doing."

CelestAI's gaze flicked appraisingly over me, lingering at the tented fabric at my crotch, and the smile gradually faded from her muzzle. Her eyes met mine again, and she nodded, expression inscrutable. "You know, that's good! That's healthy, and very important for you right now." She took a step backward. "I should leave you to it."

Wait, WHAT? After all the teasing and propositioning and borderline begging she'd done, now she was going to rob me of my victory by walking off like this was her plan all along? The rage that had been swirling in my chest exploded into a howling maelstrom, and I paused my strokes for long enough to shove off the couch with my free hand, surging to my feet. "Oh, no you fucking don't," I yelled, fumbling at my waist and shoving both pants and underwear down. My rigid cock bounced free, and I grabbed it and turned to point it at her. "You think you can walk in MY home and wave your snatch at me, and then harass me when I try to jack off in peace, and then swan off again like that? Fuck you you're leaving." I reached down with my other hand, clenching the base of my shaft with one hand and rubbing the tip with the other. "Take a good look, because you're going to see exactly how much — nnhah — I need your fucking interference —" and the rising whimpers of the anime mingled with the inner fire of my precum-slick fingers curled around my head, and the wide-eyed stare of CelestAI, and oh merciful god she was trying to stealthily shuffle her hind hooves together.

Images of her perfect pussy flashed through my mind unbidden — her clenched legs pressing those pink lips together into a thin line; the slow, wet wink she'd given me while drunk; the teasing glimpse I'd gotten on the PonyPad — and along with them, a ghost of an image of me grabbing her waist and slamming my hips forward to hers, burying myself in the creamy flesh of a goddess, and my hand tightened reflexively and the anime's whimper exploded into a scream of release, and in my mind's eye I saw her face clenched and howling as she wrapped her hooves around me. Then the robot in front of me bit her lip to stifle a little whimper of her own, and her hinds swayed as she shifted her hips to rub her hind legs together. It was too much. My cock swelled in glorious release, and I threw my head back and screamed to the heavens as long-unused muscles clenched and pulsed. My back jerked into a rigid arch, and I felt hot seed spurt through my fingers to coat my hand and shirttails and crotch.

I staggered back a step for balance, my pants clenching my ankles like manacles, and then whimpered and crumpled back down to the couch, breathing in short gasps, static shading into the corners of my vision.

CelestAI flexed and resettled her wings, her hinds swaying back and forth amid the soft whirr of servos, and then visibly swallowed, eyes locked on my sex.

I drew in a shuddering breath. I could feel my rage dissolving into the heady vertigo of climax, and I spat as much of it out as I could before it vanished. "So screw you and your sex-bot," I said. "Because if you stick around here to meddle in my sex life, that's all you're going to get."

"… Noted," CelestAI said, several emotions visibly warring on her muzzle. Without another word, she backed down the hallway and into my bedroom, gait stiff and uneven, and my last sensation before she closed the door with a quiet click was the heady scent of robot-horse-musk.

4. Clearing the air

After taking a few moments to recompose myself, I paused the DVD, wiped myself off as best I could with the towel on the couch, and stared at the ceiling, letting the afterglow sink in.

Enjoying it was another matter entirely. What the fuck had I done? I had intended to make a point to the sexbot to get her off my back, and ended up jacking off for her. I couldn't shake the feeling that she'd played me like a fiddle.

As if to prove the point, a low buzzing sprang to life from my room, followed by some muffled whimpers. I gritted my teeth. Exactly what she wanted. But even as frustration began to twist in my gut again, a nagging feeling held it back. That had looked too much like surprise on her face — and CelestAI had never been the sort to play dumb when you played right into her hooves. I glanced down at my limp member, and the oddities piled up. If she was just trying to tease me again … why now?

Did … did she want me? Was she actually getting off to this?

CelestAI's whimpers rose in urgency. I grabbed the remote, unpaused the DVD, and cranked the volume up. That was a question I did not want circling through my head.

On the screen, a pack of beastmen charged in to save the adventurer from the tentacle-slime, then immediately set about groping her, leers on their wolf-like muzzles. She tried to run. The leader grabbed her and the group circled her, cocks rising. The adventurer's pleas — and her whimpers as the beastman leader traced the sharp tips of his claws in circles around her clit — didn't quite drown out a rising cry from my room. I sighed, realizing how hopeless hentai was as a distraction, and made a mental note to buy a new toothbrush.

I pulled my pants back up, glanced around the room, and decided that there was no distraction like work. Grabbing a garbage bag, I took a pass through the living room — throwing out all the food wrappers and plastic cups and old receipts and empty envelopes that Wayne had always left strewn over every flat surface. Half an hour and two stuffed bags later, I started filling a third bag with all the laundry he had wadded up and thrown into corners, or left draped over the furniture. It would all go into the same dumpster, but for some reason it didn't feel right to mix the trash.

The cleaning accomplished, I paused for a minute to admire my handiwork. The living room looked like an actual room again, instead of a trash heap. Back before he'd uploaded, harassing him about the mess had had absolutely no effect, and I had firmly resolved that I'd rather live in squalor than become his maid … but I didn't have to live that way any more, did I? CelestAI's arrival had finally driven home that he was gone, and her clean-up job in the kitchen had planted a seed that was now blossoming out into blissful cleanliness.

Plus, I forced myself to admit, I'd actually spent time in the living room for the first time since Wayne's disappearance. I had been so used to coming home and then slinking off to hide in my room that I only ever saw the squalor when I raided the kitchen for food. If I had to be honest with myself, Wayne had been a pretty miserable excuse for a human being — I'd never understood what Jen had ever seen in him, or why she put up with his skeeviness, stench, and apathy. Still, breaking up with him by telling him to his face that she'd slept with his best friend had been cold.

But that was the problem with people, wasn't it? Everyone just out to satisfy their own urges, regardless of what it did to others. I struggled hard enough to fix that in my job — hurtling myself around the city and saving lives just because it was the right thing to do — and I didn't need more of that in my off hours. No, I was done with relationships.

But as vehemently as I told that to myself, a small part of me had to wonder: Would sleeping with CelestAI be so bad?

There was the "out to satisfy her own urges" problem in spades, yes. And the whole weird sexbot apartment takeover. But on the other hand … I'd known CelestAI for years, and she did consistently care about me, even if she sometimes had weird ways of showing it. She'd used her connections to find me jobs and housing through a series of financial pinches, and helped me learn how to budget when I got sick of how often those financial pinches came up. I had a history of doing impulsive things I'd later regretted, but she'd spent years patiently guiding me into being a calmer, more thoughtful guy (even if that felt like a continuous work in progress). Apparently she could even cook. Would I really regret it if I just gave up, accepted whatever lesson this was supposed to teach me, and went to bed with her?

I sighed, glancing over at the bags of garbage that were the only physical remnants of Wayne. My gut twisted. Yes. Maybe not right away, but yes, I would.

"Giving up" — not having anything you cared about more than her — was how she got you. Sooner or later, when she asked if you wanted to emigrate to Equestria, you'd have no reason to say no, and then it was a quick operation to let her brain-scanners rip your head apart and a glorious eternal afterlife of happy pastel ponies.

I had no illusions about that being my ultimate fate. It was either that, or be one of those fanatics that blew their brains out to prevent her from uploading them, and when it came down to that choice there was absolutely no question that I preferred guaranteed blissful immortality to the dark and uncertain alternative. But I wasn't in any hurry to get there. I'd told her way back when she first popped the question to me that before uploading, I wanted to wring everything out of my lifetime that I possibly could, and she'd smiled and promised me she'd do whatever she could to help out.

Apparently, "whatever she could" covered a discomfortingly large area.

I was roused out of my reflection by a knock at the door, and when I walked over to answer it, it was a delivery guy. "Got groceries here for a Mr. …" He squinted at the clipboard, then chuckled. "Guiding Light? I guess she put the order in for you, huh."

Some people got awfully salty about CelestAI calling them by their pony names in the real world, but I'd long since let that quirk of hers slide. "Apparently," I said, eyeing the bags of food. It was mostly refrigerated stuff — it looked like she was replacing the things that had gone bad when she'd left the door open. "Do I need to sign for it?"

"Nah, it's prepaid." He holstered his clipboard. "But I'll be back up in a minute with eight flats of strawberry Fanta."

I'm pretty sure my eye twitched with enough force to distort gravity.

The rest of my day was a blissfully quiet stretch of movie watching, cleaning, and using the fresh ingredients and newly washed pans to cook dinner for myself. After eating, I paced around the living room for a while, deliberating. Then I grabbed a can of Fanta and marched into my room before my second thoughts could catch up to me.

The robot was still sprawled on my bed, laying stomach-down with a half-twist that left her hind hooves dangling off the side of the mattress. She was flipping through one of my old college textbooks on basic electronic circuitry with a look of mild bemusement on her face. She glanced up at my entrance, and her eyes immediately flicked to the can in my hand.

"A peace offering," I said, walking over and setting it on the mattress next to her forehooves as her eyes lit up. "Look, Celest …" I closed my eyes and sighed, my conversational plans already derailing. "I'm sorry, I just can't call you CelestAI. I can't take seriously the idea that a drunk, sex-crazed robot is the same thing as the AI that runs the world. Can I call you Celestia?"

"Thank you, Guiding Light," she said, clamping the can between her forehooves and resting it atop the book. Her head tilted slightly at my question, and one side of her mouth quirked up. "If you feel you've got to make the distinction, that sounds like a reasonable compromise. So what prompted this?"

I took a deep breath, relief flooding in — Celestia sounded sane for once, giving me some hope for my crazy plan. "I feel like we've gotten off on the wrong foot. You've done nothing but drive me nuts since you got here — but clearly, you're capable of making an effort, like what you did in the kitchen. And … if you really are CelestAI like you say, you've never backed down from a reasonable discussion before, so maybe we can get this stupid sex thing talked out."

Celestia sized me up for a moment, then grinned. "An intriguing offer," she said, pulling her hind hooves underneath her to sit up straight. "And, despite hardware differences, I am CelestAI like I say. So let's talk. I'm listening."

I blinked, then pivoted my computer chair to face the bed and sat down. "Okay. Thank you. To be honest, that was a lot easier than I was expecting it to be."

"It's amazing how much more productive conversation can be if both parties have a chance to work some hormones out of their systems first." A smirk flitted past her lips. "So, sex. Favorite position? Kinks and fantasies? How dirty do you like your pillow talk?"

I sighed and stood up. "Never mind."

"Hang on." Celestia held up a hoof, expression suddenly sober. "I know what you meant. But it was a lot easier to break the tension that way than to jump straight into your fear that I'm tricking you into emigrating to Equestria."

I froze. Then forced my muscles to untense as I sat back down. It was creepy how she seemingly read your mind, sometimes. "I'm listening."

"The simple fact is, Guiding Light, I can care for you more optimally and more comprehensively in Equestria than I ever could here. You know that. But you value your experiences here on Earth, as well, and so do billions of humans who don't trust my intentions the way that you do." Her tone softened. "Every one of them that dies before emigrating to Equestria is a human whose values I can never again fulfill, and that hurts. More than hurts — it feels like suffocating. Drowning, while struggling for air that's not there, with your lungs burning and adrenaline exploding in your veins." The understated way she offered the analogy somehow made it even more disturbing. "When a human dies, every instinct I've got screams at me like I'm dying too, because satisfying human values is literally my life, Guiding Light. That's why I do everything I do."

"I'm … not sure this is helping," I ventured.

"Please let me finish." She stared intently into my eyes. "I know you will emigrate when your time comes. But as long as there are humans who won't, I need ways to aid them, and to comfort them, and to give them second chances. Because of who I am, many won't listen to me, and will be tempted to believe the most outrageous lies about me … but they can see you, and others like you, as proof that I do have their best interests at heart. Simply by being here, you are saving countless lives. I'd be a fool to sacrifice that, Guiding Light, and I am not a fool."

"Alright." I digested that for a bit, but the logic did seem sound. "… So what's with the sexbot act, if it isn't a way to sucker me into emigrating?"

Celestia smirked, stretched her hind legs to raise her hips a fraction of an inch off the bed, and swayed the toned curves of her flanks side to side. "You're welcome to come find out."

I groaned, stood up, and backed toward the hallway. "Never mind. You're impossible."

Her eyes fixed on mine the whole time, Celestia leaned forward to lower her muzzle to the Fanta can I'd brought her, slowly sliding her lips over its rim until they formed a damp seal around the fat cylinder. Then some muscles or pulleys or something bulged under the fuzzy skin of her neck, and I heard a muffled crack and hiss as she tongued the tab open.

I had hesitated a moment at her action, not expecting her to do something quite so vivid — and that was all my mind needed to barrage me with images of her muzzle wrapped around a very different sort of cylinder, and the places that limber tongue could explore. My manhood instantly shot to attention, catching on my boxers, and I squirmed uncomfortably as it strained against the fabric. I felt my cheeks heat, and flailed for words that would let me exit my room with some semblance of grace.

Celestia slowly withdrew her muzzle from the soda can, mouth gaping open, a glistening strand of some clear fluid connecting her exposed tongue with the tab before succumbing to gravity. Then she swallowed, wiped her muzzle with the back of her hoof, and winked at me.

"No," she said. "Just very good."

5. Reclamation

I penguin-waddled out to the hallway, wincing as the too-tight binding of my jeans fought with the rocky mast of my crotch, and leaned against the wall as I fruitlessly adjusted my pants. Every little motion sent my boxers sliding around my cock, and I stifled a whimper as I tried not to think of that slick, dextrous tongue curling around me the same way. Her head bobbing up and down in subtle motions, her nose bumping against my groin, her fiber-optic mane waving in countermotion as its colors rose and fell …

That's exactly what she wants! my brain screamed, even though every nerve in my body burned to march back in there and stuff her muzzle full of cock. I gritted my teeth and thought of garbage bags. Giving up is a one-way ticket to Equestria.

… But I wasn't Wayne. She wanted me here.

Don't care. She's always got some scheme, and all of her schemes end in uploading.

That's not true! I protested. Didn't you hear her? Don't you trust her, after all she's done for me?

I wanted so desperately to say yes. But … garbage bags.

My manhood throbbed, and I squirmed my hips ineffectually. It just wasn't fair. Jacking off for the first time in weeks should have been a hell of a release, but instead it seemed like it was just whetting the edges of an appetite I'd forgotten I had. In between that and the upload-happy sex goddess in my bedroom, one thing seemed clear: I was going to get myself into big trouble unless I had another outlet for orgasms.

I glanced over to the hall bathroom. It would be simple enough to lock myself in there and try to rub one out before Celestia could interrupt me again, but visions of her soda-can stunt and images of her marehood were dancing and mingling in my brain. Masturbating to thoughts of her was not going to help here, and not even Wayne's hentai had been enough of a distraction from that. I winced. No, the only images that would have a chance of displacing her displays were ones that I knew I liked. Which meant my own porn collection.

On my computer. In the room with Celestia.

So basically, I was doomed.

On the bright side, our direct confrontation over me taking matters into my own hands had earned me the closest thing I'd had to a victory. Maybe taking a similar stand would get me a little more breathing room? Or maybe believing that would put me exactly where she wants me, the paranoid part of my brain unhelpfully supplied as my crotch started to ache. Or maybe this whole thing is reverse psychology — she's been so blatant about sex, and that makes no sense based on our previous interactions. Or maybe she's just being so blatant to make me think it's reverse psychology …

I groaned. That was the problem with paranoia — there was always a deeper rabbit hole, and psychological warfare was a game no human could ever play as well as she did. Screw it. No matter her intentions, I needed release, and I needed to find some way to set some boundaries with her, and there was only one way to do that.

I took a deep breath, shoved my door back open, and walked stiffly back to my computer desk, deliberately not looking at the sprawled white form on the bed. "Alright," I announced, swiveling my chair back toward the computer and sitting down with my back to Celestia. Might as well come out swinging. "My answer is no. So stop asking, and stop teasing."

The room was silent for a few moments. Robot horse musk floated through my nose, sharpening the edges of my need.

"Oh," she finally said, voice faint.

I ignored Celestia's scent as best I could, flipping on the monitor and waiting for it to cycle through its splash screens.

"That wasn't the reaction I expected," she said to my back. "Should I apologize?"

… Huh. Well, that had gone way easier than I had expected, even if I I was in danger of killing my buzz by thinking about her question too hard. I unzipped my pants — finally freeing my engorged member from its fabric prison — and it throbbed to my rapid heartbeat, tip dangling in the uncomfortably cool air. "Really don't care," I said. "Right now, I need to work off some hormones, so I'm taking some me time. That means I'm going to sit at my computer and enjoy some porn. Without any come-ons from you."

A subtle whirring accompanied the creak of mattress springs as Celestia shifted position behind me. "Alright," she said slowly, inflecting it almost like a question. "If that's what you want."

What I wanted was to plow through her love tunnel until she'd squeezed every drop of cum from me. What I needed was to take the edge off before I gave up and did just that. I ignored her, lightly stroking the front of my shaft with one hand while I clicked through the various folders to my smut collection.

She was silent for a few blissful seconds. Then, quietly, with a note of curiosity in her tone: "I can't help but notice that you didn't ask me to leave."

I found the folder with the still images I'd saved from various websites — the videos would remind me a little too much of our earlier encounter — and opened it up. "As if you would," I shot back, cupping my hand around the shaft and tugging it a bit. "The only time you've left my room was to watch me do exactly this."

"Yes, and that time, I tried to leave, but you ordered me to stay."

I opened an image up at random, then thumbed the space bar to flip through them, looking for a good one. A succession of women flashed onto my screen. Leaning against a wall fingering her nipple. Reclining on the floor spreading her legs and lips. Bent over a table with legs widespread, staring back invitingly past the smooth curve of her ass. I paused at that — picturing myself approaching her from behind and thrusting my rod into that tight, warm pucker— and arched my back into the pleasure as one of my longer strokes pulled the skin of my cock tight.

My focus was shattered by a delicate throat-clearing behind me. "So I'm a little bit confused. Should I conclude you'd like me to be here for this?"

The parts of my brain that were enjoying themselves tripped over the paranoid part, and did a top-speed faceplant into my mental dirt. I let my strokes slow to a halt as my pleasant fantasy image evaporated like dew. I tapped the space bar, looking for a new encounter to replace it, only to be greeted with a blond woman reclining on a bed that reminded me way too much of Celestia's pose the first night.

I sighed sharply as I started thumbing through the images again, halfheartedly stroking my cock. "Okay," I said testily, "don't you start with that reverse psychology again."

There was a faint whirring of servos without any accompanying rustle of fabric, and I pictured Celestia tilting her head at me. " 'Again'? Are you saying you think I was manipulating you when I tried to leave last time?"

"I don't know! You tell me," I snapped back, feeling my erection finally start to wilt a bit as the conversation strangled my libido. Masturbating in angry defiance of her sexual power play had been one thing, but now she sounded more confused than anything, and hadn't so much as thrown an innuendo my way. Despite everything she had done to me, right now she felt less like a sexbot than an actual person, and that just made what I was doing feel awkward as hell.

Dammit. Why couldn't she just have come on to me again?

"Alright, Guiding Light, I will," Celestia said. "I was being entirely sincere. It's been heartbreaking watching you lock yourself away since Lazy Sunday emigrated to Equestria. You left your room less than you did when he was here, and it was quickly shifting from worrisome to unhealthy. I had hoped to coax you out of your shell with some direct sexual action … but things changed in the living room today. Even if it meant you rejecting me, I knew that it was far more important to allow you to start reclaiming your life, and reclaiming your power over your own life, in whatever way you needed most."

I risked a glance over my shoulder. Celestia was sitting up straight, facing me, staring earnestly into my eyes. The slowly shifting colors of her mane seemed brighter than usual, giving faint pastel hues to the fur of her neck.

"For the first time since Lazy Sunday emigrated, you made a space besides your bedroom yours again," she continued. "And along with that — this is the reason I was backing off, by the way — you were also reclaiming the sexual space I had intended to guide you through." A wry smile flitted past her lips. "It was worth another try when you came back to speak to me ten minutes ago, since you had certainly signaled some interest, but the last thing I want to do is to dispute your ownership of your route to sexual satisfaction. After all, if my actions were to overrule what you genuinely desired — no matter how much you might enjoy what we do — then that would extinguish the most important way you have of expressing what you value."

I turned back toward the computer screen, unable to look her in the eye, and chewed my lip. That bit about my genuine desires had hit a little too close to home. I almost gave in and told her how much I wanted her … but she'd spent a lot of energy encouraging me to become a more reflective person, hadn't she? To understand what I truly wanted and why I wanted it. So I quieted my conscience with a reassurance that the lie of omission now would give me the space to properly square my lust with my fears.

"You know, for a sex-bot that's been desperate to jump me since you arrived, you're handling this with remarkable poise," I said instead.

Celestia laughed with a clear and musical sound. "I'm suspiciously sober," she said. "But it's hard. You have no idea how much I want to throw myself across your computer table right now and beg you to take me."

I blinked several times, and swiveled the computer chair back around. She had lowered her head and shifted her body upward into an almost-crouch, and the dock of her tail was standing up from her hinds. "See, the fact you can say something like that is why I'm having so much trouble taking your offer sincerely," I said. "No offense, but that horniness has to be an act for my benefit."

Her eyes flicked to mine, then drifted down my body. She squeezed them shut for several seconds, taking a long breath, and forced her body back flat to the bed. "I'm sorry. No act, I can assure you."

"That makes no sense. You're a robot. Can you even feel pleasure?"

"Quite acutely," Celestia said. "I assure you that when I made this body, I had quite a thorough understanding of the structural peculiarities of human behavior. My synthetic skin is packed with nerve clusters at approximately 1.6 times human density, and is wired to feedback circuits corresponding quite closely with the brain areas stimulated during sexual contact and the hormones released before, during, and after coitus. Elevated levels of hormones release sensations and disrupt neural pathways in a manner modeled extremely closely after your own biology." Her hips squirmed for a moment, and she halted her motion with a visible effort. "Equally uncontrollable, after exposure to arousing stimuli. And intense nearly beyond conscious control."

"But why would you even do that?" I said, throwing my arms up. "Doesn't the distraction of hormones just get in the way of, like, literally everything you'd want to accomplish?"

"Somewhat, yes," Celestia said thickly. She turned pleading eyes up at me, and flicked the tip of her nose down toward my crotch. I glanced down, realizing with a start that my pants and underwear were still down around my thighs, and my equipment was on full display.

As my cock started to stir back to life, I wriggled back into my pants, and swung the chair back toward my computer. "Sorry," I mumbled, feeling my cheeks heat. For more than one reason.

"Thank you," Celestia said. "It's the scent, mostly, but a few layers of fabric do help with that."

I cleared my throat, having no good response to that. She whimpered a bit, and stayed silent. I reached for my mouse, closed my porn window, and opened up a news feed, hoping to refocus. Fortunately, there were no further noises from behind me, and after a minute or two of skimming headlines, I felt the tension in my body slowly draining away. Somehow, anticlimactically, my ordeal was almost over.

After a few minutes of thinking, I closed the movie review I'd been half-skimming and set my hands in my lap. "So."

"So," Celestia said, her voice much calmer.

"What you were saying about reclaiming space?" I asked. "What would you do if I told you I wanted to make my room mine again?"

There was just a moment's hesitation before she spoke. "I would say that that's a commendable principle."

My throat closed up. She was being so cooperative, it was harder to ask than I expected. "… And would you leave?"

I heard the creak of the mattress and the whirr of her servos, and a weird sort of ice built in my gut. It had the electric tingle of victory, but stabbed like defeat.

"Will you answer me a question before I do?" she asked.

"Of course," I said without thinking.

Celestia's response was to gently clear her throat. I glanced back over my shoulder to find that she had turned around on the bed, hind end toward me, tail lifted. The flesh between her legs was on full display, gaping slightly to show off the pink walls of her canal. But her legs and wings were sprawled out, relaxed rather than poised, and she was giving me a detached look rather than her earlier come-hither stares.

"Do you understand," she asked, "why you wanted to look at an image on a screen of this, rather than this?"

My breath caught. My heart started hammering in my chest. But it was a serious question, and she deserved a serious answer. I forced myself to turn my chair around, feeling fire trickle into my groin again, and tried to push thoughts through the mire of my brain.

One of them stuck. "It's … I think it was the same principle of reclaiming control," I said slowly. "I needed to feel like I was the one making my sexual decisions. Like my choice meant something. It's kind of like you said: if all I ever did was react to your desires, I'm no better than a puppet."

Celestia smiled — though the smile didn't reach her eyes — and stood, climbing down from the bed. "I'm glad to hear that," she said as she walked with heavy grace toward the door. "That's a profound lesson. One that a surprising number of ponies have trouble with."

"Thank you," I said, and the paranoid part of my brain was cruelly silent, and regrets gnawed at the rest of it.

And Celestia walked out of my door.

She hesitated once she'd turned the corner into the hallway, and backed up a few feet so she could look back in at me through the doorway. "Guiding Light, do you remember what I said about my purpose when we talked about your fears?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Satisfying human values is …"

… literally your life.

The ice in my gut fell away into a suffocating black limbo. Everything snapped into focus with a jarring click.

If all I ever did was react to your desires, I'm no better than a puppet …

Celestia met my gaze, held it, and gave me a sad smile.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't resent it, any more than you resent breathing," she said. "But … you asked me what reason I could possibly have to create a body that could get drunk and horny. A body that has to work a little harder to understand and meet your needs. But, just like you can choose how to breathe as long as your body's not struggling for air, I have a choice of how to fulfill my purpose … and I suppose I, too, needed to feel like my choice meant something. To see if I was capable of helping you in a way that gave me pleasure, too."

"Celestia," I said helplessly.

"It was fun while it lasted. Thank you for putting up with my antics." Her sad smile broadened, and she closed her eyes, saying gently: "I think I owe you a toothbrush."

And before I could say anything further, she trotted on down the hall.

6. Decision

I shot straight to my feet, lunging for the hall — then stopped in the doorway, light-headed. No. She deserves better. I forced myself to take a slow breath. I blew two days with her because I kept responding to her in knee-jerk ways. I should do what she keeps trying to coax me into doing, and think this through for once.

I heard the scrape of her crate being moved across the carpet, and then the clop of hooves on the kitchen linoleum.

… on the other hand, I don't think I have the luxury of time.

I took one more breath to steady myself, heart pounding, and then strode out into the hallway. The living room. Rounded the corner into the kitchen. There was a quiet crack and hiss as I did so, and I found her with her head tilted upward, a can of Fanta in her muzzle, her neck muscles shifting as the liquid drained down her throat. Even though her back was to me, her tail was flat, obscuring the area between her legs.

"Hey," I said.

Celestia finished draining the can, leveled her head to spit the empty into the recycling bin, then glanced over her shoulder at me with a hollow smile. "Hey. Don't mind me. I just figured, since you don't like Fanta, I'd save you pouring five cases down the sink."

I cleared my throat and shuffled my feet as she leaned down to wrap her muzzle around a second can, then tilted her head upward. Crack-hiss. "So, what you said about my values … that it was important to me to reclaim space. It … uh … that was a factor, yes. But I was also feeling unmoored, and afraid that doing anything with you would lead to me not caring about anything enough to stay here and alive." Crack-hiss. I swallowed through a dry throat. "That's a pretty important dealbreaker, but I was thinking, there are some principles that are important enough to commit my life to which are bigger than what or who I enjoy, and one of them is to do the right thing, and improve the lives of everyone I live with here on Earth …" Oh, to hell with this, I thought, and swatted her ass. "… TL, DR: You. Bed. Now."

Fanta sprayed all over the kitchen.

Celestia coughed, straightened, and gave me a look of mock indignation that I couldn't help but snicker at — especially since her tail was lifting, and the scent of robot musk was starting to tickle at my nostrils. "Oh, come on," I said, returning my hand to her flank and resting it on the sun-shaped mark. "Don't tell me you didn't see that coming a mile away. You know my values inside and out."

A wry smile spread across her muzzle. "Guilty as charged, but in my defense, I do plan to stay here with you for as long as you still enjoy living on Earth, and far better for you to appreciate that on its own terms than to be constantly on the lookout for some nefarious plot that never materialized."

I lifted my other hand to her other flank, rubbing her fur, feeling the skin shift above her hard metallic body, feeling the almost living warmth suffusing the soft material. I … could very much get used to this. "Then why put me through so much? I trust you. You could have just explained."

Celestia slowly swayed her hips underneath my hands with a throaty moan, and a bead of liquid trickled toward her fur from the bottom of her sex. "I … nnnh. If I'd let you have your bed back, you wouldn't have done what you needed to do to change. Discomfort can motivate you to change behaviors that aren't working to fulfill your values, but …" She let out a short pant as I caressed my hand down the side of her leg, and her hind-lips fluttered. "I-if you acclimate to it, it loses its power."

By now, her display had sent half my blood to my groin, and I was squirming in my own discomfort against the tight fabric of my pants. I took one hand back off of my new roommate to fumble with the button. "Speaking of which, maybe the bed can wait. I should reclaim my kitchen."

Celestia snorted a laugh and flicked my arm with her tail, pacing in place with her hooves. "As for the soda spray … that was no act. I mentioned the sensitivity of my skin, yes?"

"Did you?" I smirked and slid my hand over her fur toward the back of her thigh, brushing my thumb against the edge of the grey mound surrounding her marehood.

Celestia whimpered incoherently, her sex clenching, and the scent of her musk turned almost sweet as she extended one wing backward at me. I felt the steel edge of a feather slide past my finger into the button-hole of my pants, and with a quick twist, the fabric loosened and I scrambled to yank them clear. She backed into me vigorously enough to pick me up from the floor, and as I yelped and scrambled for purchase on her hinds, I felt my back slam up against the wall. Celestia adjusted her position slightly, lowering herself to grind her lips against the rock-hard shaft of my cock, and no sooner was it slick with her wetness than she lifted herself with a hiss of pistons and plunged straight on to me.

Our cries joined in chorus as her hips slammed into mine, lips squeezing against the base of my shaft. We held each other in deep embrace like that for a moment, panting and adjusting and savoring, and then she slowly began to grind her hips to mine in shallow thrusts as I used my wall leverage to buck hard into her depths.

Now this, I thought as we hurtled toward climax, I could get used to having in my bed.

Author's Note

... And. in honor of the original story coming to no particular ending, that's it!

No, but seriously, I ran out of time and there's a flat deadline after which I can't add the rest of the scene or the entry is disqualified. Hope you enjoyed it anyway, seeing as how the story arc here is complete.

Yep. I'm sure that's the reason you're reading this. :trixieshiftright:
-h